[rsa4046]

> For example, Nature is so kind as to accept final submissions in latex, but they'll convert it to Word. So it's completely pointless.

There is large gulf between submitting a paper (typically limited to a few journal pages) to a well-equipped organization like Springer Nature, and submitting a manuscript hundreds of even thousands of pages in length to a university dissertation office, when that document must adhere scrupulously to various formatting requirements in terms of tables, figures, pagination, citation, appendices, cross-referencing, etc. Word is fine for memos, briefs, letters, and other fairly short documents. But its capabilities for creating complex documents that must include cross-referencing, strict placement of tables, figures, and other floats, citations, referencing, etc. frankly suck. Students can't afford expensive typesetting software: TeX and friends are high quality, stable, have a large and knowledgeable user community, and most importantly, are free. You can bet that publishing houses aren't using Word and PowerPoint to produce anything beyond email. They accept Word documents because of Microsoft's market dominance, which is unrelated to the quality of software they publish.

[svara]

Yeah, I don't know about that. Most people for whom I know that, myself included, wrote their dissertations in Word. It's fine.

Yes, float placement in Word can be tricky. It can be tricky in latex too.

I'm not saying it's the ultimate tool for the job. I'm just saying it's fine. There are some things to look out for, particularly with figure placement. As there are with latex.

On the upside, you can use EndNote which is quite good, you can use comments and tracked changes, and wysiwyg is ultimately just the superior paradigm.

If you're telling some unsuspecting grad student that they need to write their thesis in latex, and they don't yet have experience in it and they don't have a massive amount of formulas to write, you're doing them a massive disservice.

[BenFranklin100]

This is untrue. It’s almost all done in Word.

Moreover, there’s a more fundamental point being neglected: the PhD thesis should be the worst thing one ever will write as no one is ever going to read it. The published papers based on it will be read instead, and if there are no published papers based on the thesis, it’s because your PhD work was shit.

Taking the time to beautifully format a thesis is at best a waste of time and at worst an exercise in vanity.

[wombatpm]

If you read the manual for Word on setting up large documents, and use styles it’s not bad. Of course that Word 6. I’m sure things are worse.

[rsa4046]

My experience is that Word (and Office products in general) have worsened over decades, favoring and indulging the least adroit user to maximize their user base, cloying the product with showy gimmicks of marginal utility or worse, whose primary purpose seems to be to keep you glued to the machine for as long as possible.

I used to support MS products way back when, when they were largely a language company. No more. Life is short, and my patience with their products has come to an end. Sure, LaTeX can be a bear, a supremely frustrating one whose learning curve is more like a wall, but at least it's a bear that sits still, and for which there are authoritative sources when you get into a real bind. With Word, PowerPoint, or Windows itself, there are few such resources, relegating you to spend hours wading through the post swamp of self-declared Microsoft MVP “experts”, where your only comfort is that “3332 also have this problem”. No thanks.